Return to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, September 08, 2022, 11:23 (805 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You are simply dodging the problem of theodicy by pretending there is no problem.

DAVID: I see it as small and you large.

Either it’s a problem or it isn’t. The subject involves God’s nature, not how big or little is the problem, and theologians/philosophers have wrestled with it for centuries.

DAVID: (under “Predatory bacteria”): […] The theodicy cranks will complain God should have made the world peaceful, but He chose not to for his own reasons. We have to work with it as it is, with our God-given brains.

dhw: Theodicy is not a complaint, but a theological problem for theists who believe that God is all-good. Forgive me if I say that anyone who dismisses “bad” as a “minuscule portion of daily events” might well be regarded by others as a “crank”.

DAVID: The 'all-good God' created our lives which we enjoy, don't we? Same sour outlook of criticism.

Some people don’t enjoy suffering. Trying to reconcile the “bad” with the notion that God is “all-good” is not a sour outlook of criticism. Refusing even to consider the “bad” is an outlook of intellectual head-in-the-sand.

dhw: I raised three points which you have now answered:

DAVID: 1) God's goal and method is simple: design a series of stepwise forms until sapiens is reached.

dhw: You have managed yet again to forget that you cannot explain why, if sapiens plus econiches were his only goal, he first designed countless life forms and econiches that had no connection with that goal.

DAVID: You forgot the food (econiches) is important.

Food is important for all organisms. That does not mean that every item of food for every organism that ever lived was an “absolute requirement” in preparation for sapiens and his food. Please stop dodging.

DAVID: 2) God's design totally explains the Cambrian Explosion.

dhw: Agreed. But your theory that we sapiens are descended from de novo Cambrian species contradicts your theory that his goal from the beginning was to design sapiens. There is no common descent from the beginning. Secondly, you have ignored the two possible explanations offered for the sudden appearance of new species (Darwin’s incomplete fossil record – new Ediacaran fossils have somewhat blurred the borderlines – and Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence).

DAVID: Forget Darwinist common descent!! God's form of evolution mimics Darwin, but His designing allows for skips and jumps like the Cambrian.

Your theory is that your all-powerful, all-purposeful God’s one and only purpose from the very beginning was to create H. sapiens plus his food. In that case, all organisms and foods from the very beginning would have led to H. sapiens plus his food (= common descent). But they didn’t all do so. And you even have sapiens descending from species that had no precursors at all (Cambrian). Clear implication: sapiens plus food were NOT his one and only purpose. Your response: your theory “makes sense only to God”, i.e. not to you. So maybe your theory is wrong. All bolded in the hope that you will stop editing out all the bits that make your theory incomprehensible to you.

DAVID: 3) ecosystems are highly structured free-for-all battles for food, nothing like your imagined God's weak free-for-all loss of control over evolution. Satisfied?

dhw: A free-for-all battle for survival does not suggest that every single life form in every single econiche for 3.X billion years was individually designed as an “absolute requirement” in preparation for H. sapiens and our econiches. And I am not suggesting “loss of control”, but that the “free-for-all” was what your God (if he exists) wanted and created.

DAVID: FREE means uncontrolled!!

Correct. But that does not mean “loss of control”, which implies that your God wanted control, had it, and lost it. In the free-for-all theory, he deliberately created something that would act independently of himself. He did not want control! (But he could dabble if he wished to.)

dhw: […] please tell us which of your theories make sense only to God.

DAVID: Specifically: His choice to evolve every one of His creations.

Your usual obfuscation. By “evolve” you mean individually design, and you’ve forgotten the Cambrian species, which you insist were NOT the products of evolution anyway. But it doesn’t matter which you mean. Either belief, that God (if he exists) decided to evolve or decided to individually design all his creations, makes perfect sense. What does not make sense is the theory I have bolded above.

DAVID: Once again you are trying to invent a personal God who cares about us. Adler warns the odds are 50/50.

dhw: […] It is you who brought up the subject of care: DAVID (More miscellany, August 30): “You love to talk about your weird God who doesn’t care about his goals. I can’t accept him.” In fact, I have never said he does or doesn’t “care”. It is you who get yourself in a twist over the subject (see also discussions on theodicy).

DAVID: You don't understand discussions of God's attributes are weak theories about a personage who is like no other person.

You have dodged your fake argument about “care”, and have now descended to the meaningless term “weak”. What is “weak”, for instance, about a God who in your own words enjoys creating and is interested in his creations?